Although often seen as places of culture, cultivation and creativity, language courses borrow the language of creativity for test-centered practices. Research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology has long recognized language courses as sites for the legitimation of neoliberal ideals that emphasize language as global, individual, and…

This study provides a situated account of a native English-speaking teacher who implements critical literacy in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom at a Korean high school. Teacher interview data and student presentations are analyzed to depict how a third space created by the EFL teacher and his students allowed meaningful and…

Increased mobility due to globalization and other geopolitical shifts has changed school demographics worldwide. In the Midwest, much of this new immigrant population is Spanish-speaking and in need of language support. Consequently, schools play an important role in responding to the New Latino Diaspora. In this paper, we describe how unconscious…

Recent conservative reviews of Australia's national English curriculum argue for a return to less critical approaches to English language education and a stronger emphasis on traditional, functional approaches to provide adequate English learning experiences for school-age students. This neoliberal shift poses a threat to adolescent learners from…

This critical instrumental case study examines a transformative world language learning approach to a unit on culture in an introductory Japanese class in a public high school. Couched in recent post-9/11 language "policy" debates, which strikingly lack mention of religion, spirituality, or environmental issues of climate change and…

Using a sociocritical approach to the study of language and literacy and discourse analysis, this article examines student initiated challenges in a sheltered English course with two types of English learners: native+, ESL students; and, recently, arriving ESL students. The analysis draws on 19 hours of video-recorded observations of…

Studies have shown that learners with high degrees of socialization with the target language community acquire the target language better (Lybeck, 2002; Schumann, 1978). Milroy's (1987) use of social network theory in sociolinguistics indicates that socialization patterns are constituted by structural relationships of different types and…

In much of the developing world, disparities between native- and nonnative-medium schools are fueled in part by government actions such as resource allocation and administrative oversight that determine institutional policies and practices that perpetuate and exacerbate educational divides, which, in turn, lead to further societal inequality. This…

Despite the growing interest in Spanish heritage language (HL) instruction, little empirical work has focused on world language education in "new Latino diaspora" areas with no previous history of educating HL students. This study used a longitudinal case study perspective to document the experiences of two Latino students in high school Spanish…

The history of textbooks is a history of contested territory. Science and history textbooks for K-12 students are particularly vulnerable to protests from various constituencies. What is the history of potentially controversial, sociopolitical material in Spanish language textbooks? Are today's students presented with a nuanced and complex vision…

Building on previous critical research regarding student resistance to English Language Teaching (ELT), this paper illustrates Chilean high-school English teachers' use of narrative to make sense of ideological challenges from students. While the government of Chile is promoting English in connection with the nation's export-oriented economic…

The paper reports an investigation carried out in two Korean EFL classrooms, being small-scale interventions within existing classrooms or institutional structures. A teacher-researcher introduced critically-oriented material using an optional class in a junior high school and an existing class in a senior high school. The focus was on…

This article pursues two main lines of inquiry: How might postcolonial theory, feminist and postcolonial translation studies sharpen our critical understandings of the micro- and geopolitics of English language learning? What kinds of pedagogical practice might such new developments ground in order to foster our learners' critical ways of knowing…